The Dying Man
by basilisssk
Summary: For people interested in consistency, this take place approx one half year after Lupin and Snape meet for beers.


The dying man

He stands framed by the window, framed by the dusk light in the gloomy room. He stands there and stares at the darkness falling, stares and stares at the crumbling wall opposite and the dirt on the window pane. He is so still you would think he had frozen there, and there is nothing in his posture, nothing in his face to suggest that he has become a dying man.

Behind him the room holds only last stop furniture: a sink with a cracked mirror above it, a bed and a dented wooden chair in the corner. There is no suitcase, no possessions, but the guesthouse is very cheap and no one even raised and no one even raised an eyebrow when he walked in.

As the blackness folds over everything he flicks the grimy light switch and the room glows florescent and the cigarette burns and the stains on the carpet are suddenly illuminated. He takes off his jacket and hangs it carefully over the back of the chair. He sits down and unties the black boots, wipes the dust off with his sleeve and places them side by side under the chair. Slowly he pulls his belt off, coils it next to the boots, removes the dark trousers and folding them in thirds places them on the seat, rubbing the creases out before unbuttoning the white shirt, the cuffs slightly grubby with age. He drapes it over the trousers and stands there for a moment in his boxer shorts and t shirt, shivering slightly in the cool autumn air.

When he looks at his pale face in the mirror he doesn't see anything but his eyes and other eyes through them. He doesn't know why he is dying, he only knows that he must. He borrows a razor from a man next door, picks up the slither of soap by the sink and works up a thin lather to shave in. The feel of the blunt razor is rough as it rips through three days of stubble. The water is grey mud as it drains away gurgling down the plug hole. He turns off the light and sits on the bed in the glow from the street lamps. The night is painted a dirty black pink from the polluted city lights. The brown blankets are harsh against his skin, and he wonders how many people have sat there, cracked and broken faces, how many different sorrows the room has seen.

He lights a cigarette and tries to remember how it is that he came to be dying, and then to forget. Distinct memories… genuine smiles on the faces of people who were once his friends… the smell of dawn in winter… crashing shattered glass… a burning pain on his arm… uncountable pain shied away from… iced water on summer days… everything rotting away. The smoke curls blue into the night. He could stay like that forever, nothing but wisps of smoke and far away memories. He throws the cigarette out of the window and pulls it shut to sleep. The dreams are the same every night, the time they killed a thirth, the figure burning its black horror onto his mind. Hardly any of the masked men lost, people queuing silently to collect the few belongings. He wakes in a cold seat before the shards of the grey dawn have appeared round the curtains. He can feel the cold death dread as he pulls on his clothes.

He walks out into the grim October air, he walks past people, they were always in his way, he can feel the hate of despair as they brush against his sleeve. He is unable to comprehend how then can still smile. This is how it feels to be dying, still living but already dead. A destiny written in concrete, a fate he doesn't have to choose but which is already as real to him as breathing. He feels as though he is walking in slow motion, as though the whole world, the litter and the leaves are passing underneath.

Was it ever any different? He couldn't judge how long it had been growing in him, he couldn't say what it was that broke him in the end.

He walks through the bleary early waking suburbs, the lighted windows seem to mock his desolation, he can imagine other lives in there, the warmth, the hundreds of lives that are beyond him. The city grows up before him, its lonely tower blocks stretching to nowhere, he wants to savor it all, to freeze this last crisp damp morning onto his mind to last him forever.

It is only the terror of the unknown that makes him pause at the church, it is only the superstitions he tried all his life to forget that makes him stand there dredging up the memories of his childhood, all those hours his mother pulled him into the musty darkness. The fear that is all pervasive drives him inside, into the candles and the shadows and the long forgotten prayers that haunt his lips. He tries to keep the depravity of eternity from his mind as he stands before the towering figure of Christ on the cross. He traces the lines of agony on the face, the pain is almost his. He can nearly see the swat and the blood pouring from the punctured body, can practically smell it mingling with the dust. He wants to know how hard it is to die. He wants to collapse onto his knees and scream out to all the Gods, to anyone for help. The melancholy candlelight surrounds him. The only thing that keeps him on his feet, that stops him breaking that thin film of dignity, is the knowledge that no one will help him now.

It is enough to kill anyone, those things you might have done, the things you thought were within your reach. Was life really only something to fight through? Somehow he feels betrayed by it all. It was the faces that turned away, the devastation of the silence, they never asked about the pain. He was exhausted by it all.

The city was not quite as he'd remembered, it had somehow diminished, it spread out tired and forlorn now. The stains ingrained on the pavement, the litter drifting. The smell of food wafting from cafes makes him feel sick to his core.

The despair, the lead weight of it in your chest, the ache it leaves every time you breathe, this is what killed him, what left him here just a walking shell of a man, everything gone. He could cry like a child now. All the waste and the fear weighing up to pull him down, all the terrible knowledge he would have given anything not to know. He had always been alone like this, he had always been walking away. Hope that little thread of life had deserted him for longer than he cared to recall. The bitterness of everything he had seen had destroyed him before he'd even had time to really live.

He walks slowly up the stairwell, past the marker pen graffiti and the broken bottles, over the grime and the dirt. Every step grows heavier, everything seems to have turned to shades of grey, the city growing smaller and more distant at every landing window. Shafts of sunlight break between the clouds. He has drowned in this world, he has been falling like this forever with nobody there at all. He walks out into the brief glare of sunlight on rainwater. The roof of the multi-story car park is almost empty, just two or three burnt out abandoned joyride wrecks. He stands there at the edge and looks at the buildings floating away. He stands there and tries to remember the lie about England and the green splendor. The intense beauty of decay is all that he can see. Nothing that poets wrote of, that must have been a different world. There is nothing between himself and the concrete, he tries to measure his despair but it is endless. It grew and grew until it was out of control, until it consumed him like a tumor. There was no one he could have turned to, he was born into solitude, into this bleak and burning ache. All he wanted was an end, all he wanted was someone to care that he had to see all the blood and the tears and the pain.

He is there on the edge, the cars pass underneath, the desperate fear is like a symphony in his chest. The pain is more terrifying than any curse he ever felt, he has gone past caring, he has gone past everything, it is a helpless agony that consumes him. "Oh fuck." He says, "Oh fuck' oh fuck." The twisting hate for everything that ruined him and the world is already turning, it is blurring out of shape.


End file.
